cyberGRID Innovation & Development

We are passionate about innovation!
cyberGRID is involved in cutting-edge EU-wide efforts with the objective of promoting the integration of renewable energy resources. Because when energy efficiency is boosted, not only are greenhouse gas emissions being reduced, but also costs are saved for all stakeholders.

cyberNOC is the winner of the Power Network Innovation Award 2019!

We want to take great discoveries from the IT research lab and implement them on real-time energy markets. Therefore, cyberGRID has formed partnerships internationally, confirming our expertise in software development. Our impressive track record of EU-wide innovation projects, designed to deliver breakthroughs on economic and societal levels, prove that cyberGRID has converted pilots and demonstrations into actual technological products at minimum costs.

Read more about how cyberGRID is making the best use of energy capacity in these European R&D projects:

cyberGRID’s Role:
Using its Flexibility Aggregation Platform, cyberGRID will lead efforts to integrate all 7 pilot demonstrations. This will showcase the Platform’s functionality by deploying a service that enables cross-border exchanges of flexibility information. cyberGRID will provide its state-of-the-art flexibility tools and contribute its expertise on to P2P markets.
cyberGRID also leads on defining and enhancing the flexibility services platform for which guidelines and recommendations will be formulated. Flexibility enablers and associated constraints will be defined, namely: standardized flexibility products with bids structure and information, activation triggers, setpoints, measurements, and verification of service delivery.

Partners: 7 large scale pilots, with 51 consortia members will demonstrate a real digital market environment over electrical systems with significant amounts of DSF and reduce operational and investment costs that will benefit energy end-users.

TALENT

The aim of the transition to a more sustainable energy system is to build a low-carbon and climate-resilient future. TALENT will aid this transformation with technological advancement in the generation, transport and distribution phases of energy infrastructure. Since renewable energies are on the rise, the electric market needs to be adapted by means of increasing the grid flexibility, guaranteeing its stability and supply security, while still assuring affordable energy to end-consumers.

The main objective of TALENT is to achieve the increase of batteries penetration in the grid through the cost reduction in two main components: 1) power electronics for batteries and 2) software to manage hybridised decentralised energy systems. In the case of power electronics, cost reduction will be mainly attained by means of new designs and architectures. With regards to software, a cost reduction is reached due to its interoperability (software as a service – iSaaS).

cyberGRID’s Role:
cyberGRID will lead the development of a distributed architecture for the management of decentralised and hybridised energy systems. Based on the algorithms, an optimization method will be developed to maximise the multi-service usage of the battery storage over the lifetime while minimizing ageing and loss of capacity. By extending battery life, fewer resources are required, which has a positive impact on the climate. Furthermore, the technology offers valuable insights for the production of more efficient batteries and can thus make an important contribution to the promotion of multi-service battery storage.

Partners: TALENT was kicked off in October 2019 in Boecillo, Spain and is coordinated by Fundacion CARTIF. The consortium combines 11 partners and a third party across six different countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), each contributing specific knowledge to meet TALENT objectives.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement Nº 864459.

Crossbow

Integration of batteries into a sustainable energy system

The European Commission’s vice president in charge of the Energy Union, Maroš Šefčovic, said “[batteries] development and production play a strategic role in the ongoing transition to clean mobility and clean energy systems”.

Projects such as CROSSBOW are underway to integrate batteries into a sustainable energy system to leverage the battery value chain, from materials to system integration and recycling.

CROSSBOW’s long title “Cross-border management of variable renewable energies and storage units enabling a transnational wholesale market” explains the overall objective: The development of clean energy sources involving storage units will boost the EU Commission’s efforts to secure Europe’s competitiveness in this market. Also, the reduction of the cost of the regional energy system represents another strategic goal with societal benefits, as well as the planning for the development of the electricity grids in Southeastern Europe.

As a solution provider, cyberGRID is nominated as Task Leader in one of CROSSBOW’s technical work packages. Our involvement will entail the development of the cooperative ownership of flexibility assets and the creation of a toolset for the transnational ancillary and wholesale market, respectively. Also, substantial efforts will be invested in preparing for demonstration and validation of the platform. In particular, cyberGRID will analyze the minimum requirements for market harmonization and consult on a coordinated multi-nodal market design.

CROSSBOW results will be evaluated by 8 TSOs in Eastern Europe, validating the project’s impact through 9 common high-level use cases in at least three different countries.

Partners: CROSSBOW was kicked off in November 2017 in Sofia, Bulgaria. It currently represents one of the European Union’s most critical projects in the field of smart grids. The CROSSBOW consortium consists of 24 commercial, non-profit and academic partners, among which there are technological partners from Austria, Germany, Spain, Slovenia, and UK. The transmission system operators (TSOs) come from eight Southeastern countries in Europe (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, the Republic of Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia).

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement Nº 773430.

Magnitude

Magnitude: A reliable and stable European electric system needs flexibility

To achieve the goals of the EU Climate and Energy package for the decarbonisation of the energy sector, renewable energy sources are being integrated into the system. To accomodate the power generation from such variable sources, energy markets need to evolve with the goal to enable the rewarding of flexibility from the generation, demand, or storage of energy. MAGNITUDE will bring technical solutions, market design and business models, to be integrated on ongoing energy policy discussions.

The goal of project Magnitude is to design and develop business and market mechanisms as well as supporting coordination tools to enable an improved level of flexibility for the European electricity system, by increasing and optimizing synergies among electricity, gas and heat systems.

Based on seven real-life case studies of multi-energy systems located in different European countries with different regulatory and geopolitical environments and different technological development levels, Magnitude will:
1. Simulate the multi-energy systems in the case studies and optimise their operation strategies maximising the provision of specific flexibility services
2. From existing regulations, propose improved market designs, and integrate them in a market simulation platform for evaluating its performance among the case study countries
3. Quantify the benefit of pooling flexibilities from decentralized multi energy systems for energy markets through an aggregation platform.

EDF facilities in Paris-Saclay. Picture by Ann Wouters The consortium during kick-off. Picture by n-side

The results achieved with MAGNITUDE will define policy strategies and recommendations in a pan-European perspective. Achievements will be spread among stakeholders to raise awareness and foster higher collaboration among the electricity, heating and gas sectors to achieve the common goal of a less carbon intensive, yet reliable energy system.

cyberGRID is a key contributor to the entire project, with particular leadership in the work package entitled „Tools for multi-energy aggregation“. Here, efforts are focused on aggregating flexibilities by innovatively making use of cross-energy carrier synergies. cyberGRID will develop a flexibility market platform based on existing tools in order to demonstrate the possibility of trading flexibilities on different power markets, and to optimise the revenues from trading energies and flexibilities. In addition, cyberGRID will contribute to other work packages with the practical experience of operating virtual power plants and providing ancillary services. cyberGRID is the main contact for the Austrian case study.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 774309 . This text reflects only the author’s view and the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

InteGrid

InteGrid, a project designed to bring consumers closer to the energy system and its technology
Over the upcoming fours years, a consortium of 14 organisations from 8 European countries will be working on InteGrid, a H2020 project on low carbon energy. It is aimed at bridging the gap between citizens and the various players in the smart grids field by demonstrating how DSOs can allow all participants in the energy system to get actively involved in the market. The mix of commercial and research entities in this professional multinational group ensures that the interests of all parties are being met to achieve the best possible results while applying new approaches in data management and consumer involvement.

Financed by the European Commission, InteGrid makes a valuable contribution to the EU energy sector by developing and implementing actual business models, and delivering real-time demonstration results. InteGrid will enable utilities, aggregators, and other energy agents to move towards market facilitation while meeting consumer-driven needs like security, quality of supply, and sustainability. This is achieved by creating scalable and replicable solutions in an integrated environment.

(in Portuguese, with English subtitles)

cyberGRID is involved throughout the entire duration of the project, with particular engagement in the work packages with the objective of preparing and monitoring demonstration activities, as well as ensuring the models’ self-sustainability. Our team will be focused on improving the grid user active participation prototypes, and on setting up and integrating the necessary tools and hardware based on a smart architecture.

The InteGrid consortium, a multinational group of energy experts from 8 countries

Partners: InteGrid was kicked off in Lisbon in January of 2017. It is headed by EDP Distribuição, a DSO from Portugal. Other members are DSO from Slovenia and Sweden (Elektro Ljubljana and Ellevio); industrial companies (cyberGRID, GE, SAP); industrial consumers (Águas de Portugal), a start-up expert in community engagement (SIM) and R&D institutions (INESC TEC, KTH, AIT, Comillas University, CNET and DNV-GL).

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and Innovation Programme under the grant agreement no. 731218.

FutureFlow (completed)

Designing eTrading Solutions for Electricity Balancing and Redispatching in Europe

The FutureFlow project will link interconnected control areas of four Transmission System Operators (TSO) of Central-South Europe, which today do face increasing challenges to ensure transmission system security. The growing share of renewable electricity units has reduced drastically the capabilities of conventional, fossil-fuel based means to ensure balancing activities and congestion relief through redispatching. There is a need to face future balancing and network security challenges with the help of a more intensive and joint approach at regional level. The project, as recently approved under the Horizon 2020 framework of the European Commission, proposes research and innovation activities to validate that consumers and distributed generators can be put in a position to provide balancing and redispatching services in addition to conventional units, within an attractive business environment.

Video: The FutureFlow project: Prosumers as guardians of the power system.

cyberGRID amongst the other partners in this consortium have agreed to jointly explore the combination of two routes to provide solutions to such problems through a unique regional cooperation:

The design of a regional cross-border techno-economic cooperation scheme: it is tailored to ensure the participation of advanced commercial and industrial consumers, prosumers and distributed renewable generators in the provision of advanced ancillary services in TSO environments with limited flexibility options.

The development and pilot testing of a comprehensive prototype IT platform and the associated economic model(s) to support this cooperation scheme.

The research and innovation activities involve real energy market players (between 30 and 45 MW of balancing power expected to be made available in the control areas of the four TSOs), this in view of:

Prototyping of innovative flexibility aggregation platforms within all four control zones,

Prototyping of a regional IT platform enabling access of these flexibility aggregation platforms to the international markets

Enabling optimization of relevant functionalities within the TSO environments from the regional perspective,

Pilot testing of these platforms and connections, based on a set of progressively ambitious use cases involving real electricity market players.

An ex-post impact analysis is proposed to deliver recommendations for the scaling-up and replication of the most promising use cases

cyberGRID will contribute to the project’s results with its expertise and cutting edge technology for managing demand response (DR) and distributed generation (DG). The work will comprise on one side research of DR&DG technical characteristics and on the other research of TSO’s requirements for Automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve (aFRR) with the ambition to ensure level playing field for all suppliers of this highly valuable ancillary service. Based on these findings cyberGRID will prototype an innovative aFRR flexibility aggregation platform within all four control zones. It will be seamlessly integrated with the regional market IT platform enabling efficient monetization of DR&DG flexibilities across national borders.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No 691777.

Flexiciency (completed)

Flexiciency, a four year project, launched in early 2015, was part-funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research programme, with the aim of addressing flexibility and efficiency within the European energy market, putting focus on consumers and making use of data from smart metering.

The European Market Place was developed in order to catalyze the interactions between relevant stakeholders in an open and standardised way and to encourage cross-border and cross-player access to innovative energy services.

The FLEXICIENCY project addressed several critical components of the modernising steps required for the European electricity grids to better enable a low carbon electricity value chain. The FLEXICIENCY project involving four major DSOs from Italy, France, Spain and Sweden, demonstrated large scale projects of new services based upon data accessibility in real time, i.e. advanced monitoring, local energy control and flexibility of aggregated customers (including demand response in action), together with an innovative solution building on the integration of existing systems towards offering such services at EU level to all players of electricity retail markets (e.g. Distribution System Operators, electricity retailers, aggregators, ESCOS and end consumers), either new or existing ones.

The demonstration also tested the new economic models and evaluated benefits in terms of possible achievements of 2020 energy consumption goals and CO2 emission targets.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 646482.

hybrid-VPP4DSO (completed)

The aim of the project hybrid-VPP4DSO was the design, evaluation and validation of a hybrid virtual power plant concept including electricity generation from renewable resources as well as consumer-related measures (provision of negawatts) to optimize the power system. Network and market driven approaches were combined, especially to provide services for the requirements of distribution grid operators. The simulation-based development of the hybrid-VPP-concept was performed with real company data. After successful validation, a proof of concept in two specific network areas in Slovenia and in Austria was put in place. Furthermore, the possibilities for business models, technical and not-technical barriers of the VPP market were evaluated.

evolvDSO (completed)

evolvDSO (“Development of methodologies and tools for new and evolving DSO roles for efficient DRES integration in distribution networks”) was a FP7 collaborative project funded by the European Commission. The project lasted 40 months (September 2013- December 2016) and was carried out by a Consortium of 16 partners coordinated by Enel Distribuzione.

With the growing relevance of distributed renewable energy sources (DRES) in the generation mix and the increasingly pro-active demand for electricity, power systems and their mode of operation need to evolve. evolvDSO defined the future roles of distribution system operators (DSOs) and developed tools required for these new roles on the basis of scenarios, driven by different DRES penetration levels, various degrees of technological progress, and differing customer acceptance patterns.

evolvDSO aimed to deliver the following main outcomes:

Future scenarios and new DSO roles
A limited set of possible future scenarios describing the evolution of electricity systems including the anticipation of future challenges of distribution systems and required new/evolving DSO roles;

Development of validated tools and methods
Set of validated tools and methods with a high replicability potential focused on where the main gaps are with respect to the identified DSO challenges and new required DSO roles. These tools should address both current and possible future challenges of the distribution system;

Evaluation of tools performance
Methodologies to evaluate the performance of the developed tools and methods considering the requirements of the key stakeholders (aligned with the EEGI requirements);

Recommendations
Recommendations for the modification of the regulatory framework and market architectures (new roles, responsibilities and interactions in the system) that take into account current technical requirements with the aim to facilitate an efficient DRES integration and more active consumers as well as market participation of new stakeholders such as aggregators and BRPs; the increasing need for storage similarly needs to be accommodated by the regulatory framework;

Roadmap
A pragmatic roadmap for the deployment of the developed tools and methods.

evolvDSO contributed to the transition to a more sustainable European energy system by maintaining and increasing the security and reliability of distribution grids facilitating the increased feed-in of DRES. The results of evolvDSO drove the implementation of the EEGI roadmap and ultimately provided a significant impetus for reaching EU climate targets.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

eBADGE (completed)

The overall objective of the eBadge project was to propose an optimal pan-European Intelligent Balancing mechanism to integrate Virtual Power Plant Systems by means of an integrated communication infrastructure that can assist in the management of the electricity transmission and distribution grids in an optimized, controlled and secure manner.

In order to achieve this objective the eBadge project developed a suite of components: A simulation and modelling tool for studying the integrated balancing and reserve market; a unified data-exchange standard using a high performance message bus between balancing and reserve entities; and VPP data analysis, optimization and control strategies.

These components were integrated into a single pilot eBadge Energy Cloud that, along with the other components was validated through tests in the lab and a real world field trial.

Of course the benefit of technology is limited unless applied for the benefit of all stakeholders. For this reason, related business models integrating energy, ICT and residential consumer benefits were also developed.

Based on the observed test results, the impact of the eBadge Energy Cloud (through the VPP reserve capacity offered to the balancing market), was then evaluated in terms of parameters including energy savings, fossil fuel savings, reduced CO2 emissions, reduced network losses, reduced overall dispatch cost and thus system prices, improved social welfare, increased market liquidity, increased electricity system flexibility and thus reliability and security of supply.

cyberPRICE

This project focuses on developing an innovative upgrade of the virtual power plant technology capable of managing incentive based demand response (DR) programs. With the development of the new cyberPRICE module, the project will tackle the area of price based DR programs. This will enable the customers to introduce efficient dynamic pricing programs, minimize trading risk and maximize revenue.

European Demand Response Center (EDRC) (completed)

This project focused on research and development of an automated European Demand Response Centre (EDRC) through aggregation and intelligent networking of industrial and commercial consumers and suppliers with integration of renewable energy sources (RES) for economic and ecological optimization of balance energy actions, such as peak power, grid stability and congestion issues.

Results of this project were a functional research of EDRC in a laboratory environment which integrates five industry/commercial sites in order to achieve best possible knowledge of demand response technology potential (technical, commercial) and its effects on the energy system as well as the technological challenges for the realization of such a system.

This project was funded with resources from the Klima- and Energiefonds, and it was carried out within the program „NEUE ENERGIEN 2020“.